


I Am, You Are

by sunflowerseed



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 15:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9241589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerseed/pseuds/sunflowerseed
Summary: You are inherently hesitant. I am in love. You kiss me sharply and hold me close when I say these things.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know what this is but yk

I am twenty six and drivelling drunk with my mate from work. You are twenty two with fawn like features and near translucent skin. You are thin and neat and wearing brown oxfords that strike my fancy, sat at a table next to the bar with a girl who looks as if she’s had a rough day. Your back is perpendicular to your chair and you are speaking to her gently over a table cluttered with papers. When you come up to order a drink I can hardly help myself from leaning over for a harmless chat. You are well spoken and fair well with my imprudent flirting. You glance at my mouth and I watch your eyes flit over my wonky teeth. There’s something that passes over your face and I’ve no doubt you find it charming by the way the corners of your mouth are fighting with you.

I am sat in a hole in the wall bar uptown. You are wearing a pale blue shirt cuffed to your elbows with an almost empty glass and a pool cue held loose in your hand. It’s your birthday; you don’t think I know and you don’t want me to, so I act as if it were any other day. You kiss me and it’s not the first time and it’s not the last. Your arms go around my neck and you cant help the way you bump the glass against my jaw with enough force to moult a small bruise.

It’s pissing rain out and you turn up to my flat soaked to the bone. I give you a change of clothes that hangs off your frame in a brutalist manner. You sit on the floor with Daisy and eat chana masala and rice out of paper boxes. You clonk out just about as soon as your utensil meets the bottom of your take away container, blotto, and I slip down onto the carpet alongside you.

Daisy takes a liking to you early on. You bribe her with meals made from scratch and morning runs. You brush out the mats behind her ears I was going to have shaved and let her chew on my shoes when I’m not around. She used to sleep at the foot of the bed but it becomes more and more common to wake up with tufts of curly brown hair in and on my face mostly because of your patted invitations. I find the both of you in a dead sleep cuddled together on the couch in the evenings whenever I’m home late from work and I don’t think I could smile any wider.

You are inherently hesitant. I am in love. You kiss me sharply and hold me close when I say these things.

You stumble up the front steps of my building glaringly drunk. You collapse into my bed with a muffled thump and I get to work freeing you of your restrictive fashion choices. You fight with the weight of sleep bearing down on you and pat absently at my cowlick in the mean time: ‘ You’re a lightweight, Mr. Eames.’. And I don’t know if you’ve gone delirious or if you’re being sarcastic but there’s no time to ask because your eyes are closed and your breath is heavy.

Mal takes one look at you and is convinced you are her soul mate. She suggests slyly that I’m punching above my weight and informs me that I need to hold on for dear life. I plan to, I do.

Your childhood home is in Brooklyn. You’re quiet and thoughtful all the way there but I don’t mind. Your mum remembers every moment of your childhood by heart and has been waiting to spill every last bit of it. I’m glad to hear about skinned knees and t-ball and fits over ice lollies. I smile at you reassuringly but the tips of your ears remain permanently reddened. We sleep in your childhood bed and you wake before me for the first time. You cradle a cup of tea to your chest and read out of a threadbare book open on your knee. When you notice me watching, your expression remains the same; sleepy and placid, but your body shifts against my side and your hand falls atop my head.

The elevator in my building is out of service the weekend I move my things. I see you work up a sweat for the first time, but you still act hardly miffed; tie flipped over your shoulder and a soft dampness marking the back of your collar. My eclectic hoard of clothing looks terribly out of place next to your finely tailored suits. When Mal and Dom arrive, conveniently late, you’re flushed and collapsed on the floor with a bottle of beer, Daisy curled up under your arm. Mal descends on you with kisses for both your cheeks and you smile at her; tired and happy. Dom hangs back and gives me a resounding pat on the back.

My mother recognizes me but she doesn’t remember that I like blokes and I have to explain to her again like I’m fifteen. I tell her about my job and my life because her brain has betrayed her and she likes you but ‘she won’t remember you’ I say. It’s only fair you know the reality of it all. I feel tethered to the earth by your touch and it’s less reassuring, more disconcerting because I want to drift away but you won't let me.

I am twenty-eight and watching you dance with your mum. You are twenty-four and flushed pink from the drink. My heart is still beating in my ears and my thumb brushes absently over the ring on my finger. I didn’t love you at first sight, I love you then, maybe more than I’d ever loved you yet, with your dark blue kippah perfectly placed on your head and your cheek on your mum’s shoulder. You lean bodily into me as the night is winding down early morning and whisper in my ear that you can’t wait to file your taxes next fiscal year. I pat you on the bottom with a grin. We’re idiots in love and everybody knows it.

You’ve let your hair grow out long enough that it’s curling around your ears. I’ve got a scar above my eyebrow that you put there with a kettle when we were drunk and trying to make tea in the dark on our trip to France with Dom and Mal. You’ve got a split lip from wrestling with Daisy and your eyes are pink with hay fever. You nose your way under my arm and I stroke idle fingers up your side.


End file.
